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TheStreet Ratings Group would like to highlight 3 stocks that pushed the sector lower today:

Agilent Technologies (
A) is one of the companies that pushed the Health Care sector lower today. Agilent Technologies was down $1.00 (1.8%) to $55.26 on light volume. Throughout the day, 1,294,513 shares of Agilent Technologies exchanged hands as compared to its average daily volume of 1,804,700 shares. The stock ranged in price between $55.10-$56.11 after having opened the day at $55.88 as compared to the previous trading day's close of $56.26.

Agilent Technologies, Inc. provides bio-analytical and electronic measurement solutions and services to the life sciences, chemical analysis, diagnostics and genomics, communications, and electronics industries worldwide. Agilent Technologies has a market cap of $18.7 billion and is part of the health services industry. Shares are down 2.0% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Monday. Currently there are 8 analysts who rate Agilent Technologies a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 1 rates it a hold.

TheStreet Ratings rates
Agilent Technologies as a
buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, reasonable valuation levels, good cash flow from operations and expanding profit margins. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

Highlights from TheStreet Ratings analysis on A go as follows:

Compared to its closing price of one year ago, A's share price has jumped by 25.39%, exceeding the performance of the broader market during that same time frame. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, A should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.

The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.48, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels. To add to this, A has a quick ratio of 2.24, which demonstrates the ability of the company to cover short-term liquidity needs.

Net operating cash flow has slightly increased to $325.00 million or 3.17% when compared to the same quarter last year. Despite an increase in cash flow of 3.17%, AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC is still growing at a significantly lower rate than the industry average of 64.29%.

The gross profit margin for AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC is rather high; currently it is at 57.89%. Regardless of A's high profit margin, it has managed to decrease from the same period last year. Despite the mixed results of the gross profit margin, A's net profit margin of 8.03% compares favorably to the industry average.